Monks & Nuns

After a quick flight northeast to Mandalay, our first stop was the Mahaghadayon Monastery. This seemed appropriate since Mandalay is a city of about 100,000 Buddhist monks and nuns out of a 1.2 million population. Mandalay is also a big trading center and former capital of the Burmese kingdom. This particular monastery is the residence of about 1,000 of these participants in the "homeless life". Many of them are young boys and young men training to be monks while also obtaining some education.



We arrived just as they were lining up for their late morning meal, their last meal of the day. While the novices and fully ordained wore maroon robes, "pre-novices" were dressed in white.



During the early part of the morning the monks can be seen out on the streets, often individually or in pairs, receiving gifts of cooked rice as well as other food. Whatever rice they receive is combined with other food offered by lay volunteers and then used as part of the late morning meal.





As in many Theravada Buddhist countries the nuns are held in lower regard. During the Buddha's time they were close to equals of the monks. But over time, most likely due to both wars and social discrimination, the nuns original order died out. Now women who wish to ordain can only enter an order that has less prestige and, in Myanmar, they wear pink rather than the maroon robes that the monks wear. Nevertheless there seemed to be many nuns in Mandalay too.





We were told that the monks and nuns in Mandalay played an active role in the 2007 rebellion against the government just as the ones in Yangon did. With this in mind, it was sobering to view the large prison from the top of Mandalay Hill. It is the semi-circular complex of buildings located behind the large white building in the photo below.